Having Lee Hardcastle as a guest speaker at the festival definitely caught me off guard, but nonetheless I knew it was going to be interesting one having him there, and I was right. And so as I held onto the edge of my seat, I prepared myself for the clips that they would inevitably show, just hoping that none of them would be as bad as "T is for Toilet" (That anal death still gets me), and surprisingly they actually weren't.
If you hadn't heard of this fellow, Lee Hardcastle is a filmmaker who specializes in stop motion plasticine videos, made in his very own bedroom, many of his videos having become internet sensations (Such as Pingu's "The Thing", Claycat's "The Raid" and numerous movie parodies based around horror and action movies and cult classics).
Hardcastle preferably likes working on his own, even during his college days, not really one to socialize with others (Which a lot of us can probably relate to). And while he disliked doing so, he made do with being the support for his team mates' own ideas back in school during group projects, before finally going solo after he graduated, simply wanting to do what he loves on his own (Which again, a lot of us can perhaps relate to).
Over the years, Hardcastle had struggled financially while continuing to stay true to what he deeply loved, through proper media exposure however (Through Youtube), Hardcastle had gotten the attention of many companies that would fund and commission him for future projects. And over those years, Hardcastle picked up on new stop motion techniques (Such as explosion effects with the use of steel wool) from other practitioners and continued improving with each piece of work.
I also found his encounter with the creators of Pingu to be both interesting and hilarious, it wasn't even a copyright issue, but the fact that they disapproved of how their adorable characters were used for such a gruesome parody ("The Thing"), which led him later on to create his own original characters to avoid the same problem in the future.
I found Hardcastle's views considerably different to other animators (And in all, most artists), while he does tend to work alone, it is great to see how far he has come with his works, while still remaining as enthusiastic and passionate as ever about them.
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